The CIA are the "good guys"?

[kentuck]

Do you actually believe that? Do I have a bridge to sell you that you will just love!

Of course, the former CIA directors would not want the memos released. Why should they? The CIA has not been right on anything for so long no one can remember.

They operate beyond the bounds of responsibility. They are responsible to no one. They are into personal fortunes, drug-running, and international crimes of every dimension. And no one holds them responsible. They are a scourge upon our nation.

Why do I say that? I personally recall how they operated in the Vietnam War period. They cannot be trusted. They are not patriots. They are scum. They should be held accountable - every single one of them.

[PDJane]

1. Every single president since the inception of the CIA

is guilty of war crimes. If something has gone awry on the world political stage, look for the sticky fingers of the CIA or the MI5, or both, to be in there somewhere.

[BlooInBloo]

11. Including Obama?

[PDJane]

12. probably not yet.

Give it to the end of his term.

Clinton used the CIA for violent actions. Carter used the CIA to arm the Taliban.......and Reagan should have been impeached for Iran Contra. Give it time.

[BlooInBloo]

13. Ok - let me know when Obama is a war criminal. Thanks!

[stillcool]

2. The entire Pentagon/Defense/Intelligence apparatus..

works for American business interests. Remember when Philip Agee wrote his book? Funny how that created the law about revealing CIA operatives that was used against Bush/Cheney.

[stray cat]

3. Who is the CIA that is all evil?

all the employees from the highest to the lowest?

[JVS]

4. -1

[kentuck]

6. Every single one that knew about these torture techniques....

and chose to remain silent. Yes, they are all evil.

[OmahaBlueDog]

7. +1

I'll give you back your point, for those keeping score.

[OmahaBlueDog]

5. The things that are true of the CIA are true of police departments

There are bad actors who get 99% of the attention and do 1% of the work.

Less than half of the CIA are involved in field ops, and information is compartmentalized, so few of them know how information is really obtained and from whom. It will not surprise you to learn that some of them learn these things from the papers like the rest of us. This majority of CIA workers are analysts who perform mundane tasks including, but not limited to:

photo intel analysis (what is in this picture?)

traffic analysis (how much traffic is going into or out of an office, a building, an installation: how much radio traffic or monitorable phone traffic is going into or out of points, without regard to content)

media analysis (what's in the paper? what's on TV? what does this tell us about intentions?)

counterintelligence (what are other known spies up to? what can we gain or learn by giving them selected or misleading information?)


reviewing and analyzing field intelligence reports (which are "scrubbed" to varying degrees to hide their sources)


....then, of the many field operatives out there, the majority of them are "legal" spies. These are people covered as State Department Defense or Commercial attaches whose status is generally an "open secret."

Yes, there are recruited foreign operatives. Yes, there are CIA employees involved in interrogation. Was all of the torture ordered or committed by the CIA? I don't know. I don't know that some wasn't committed by Army intelligence, DIA, or other unrelated intelligence gathering bodies. I also don't know how much was committed by non-governmental actors (read: Blackwater).

Probably, these questions would be best left to a Grand Jury.

[JackRiddler]

16. Police departments were not created with the express mission of breaking the law...

in every country of the world, or of operating in secret and "deniably" (beyond oversight), or of waging secret wars.

[mitchum]

8. They are murderous thugs

[leveymg]

9. Most CIA officers (or FBI, DIA, DEA, local police, etc.) are diligent, well-intended, intelligent

The organizations they work for are to varying degrees corrupt, politicized, venile, badly disciplined, and factionated. Compartmentalization and secrecy protects the worst of the worst. The higher echelons are virtually exempt from accountability.

The only effective way to deal with this is to strip classification powers, and open most IC records to automatic publication within ten years. Ongoing programs that are judged to be too sensitive must be closely audited by an independent IG who is notified of all significant developments. The IG should serve for a fixed term, have prosecutorial powers to investigate matters without providing advance notice to Agency Directors or the White House. The IG should also be also be able to seek indictments of any executive department figure, and report any classified matter to all members of the Congressional intelligence and judiciary committees.

Finally, the capital treason statute should be extended to high officials who attempt to evade or deceive oversight, or who misuse their offices for private gain. No statute of limitations.

[The Traveler]

10. In an interview, Fidel Castro was asked

(paraphrasing here) "Is it possible that your secret service" ... I forget the name of the organization ... "had a role in the assassination President John Kennedy?"

According to the interviewer, Castro was silent for a moment and then said something I found striking in its honesty. It went something like this. "I don't know. That's the problem with secret agencies ... you never know if you are aware of everything they do."

It is a problem that even the autocratic Fidel Castro recognized, way back in the sixties. Covert operations are a double edged sword. One the one hand, they are very cost effective in terms of achieving goals at lowered human costs. (Spies and assassins are more precise than shock and awe style saturation bombing raids. At some point we have got to start realizing that an Air Force fighter is an unacceptably clumsy weapon for nailing one or two bad guys. You can get the bad guys that way but it leaves behind a scorched neighborhood as "collateral damage". Put yourself in the position of one of the locals. You might not like the asshole living next to you, but you would be mightily pissed at the people who bombed his house from the air and left yours to burn in the aftermath. For some things, a covert operative with a high powered rifle really is a much better option.)

On the other hand, they of necessity operate with little direct oversight and can run open loop, without government control, for quite a while before that is detected, which is the exactly the danger Castro so clearly articulated.

It is always worse when intelligence functions are influenced by excessive political pressure. I imagine that, over the past eight years, the careers of the bad actors advanced more quickly than those who were more ethical and mindful of their duties. That guarantees an agency whose objectives will come into tension with a foreign policy that does not share their "I am a hammer ... everyone else is a nail" philosophy.

So there has to be house cleaning, at the very least, and doing that will definitely damage American intelligence capabilities for a period of time. It is proper and necessary to conduct that house cleaning in a measured, deliberate, and desperately fair fashion. But there is no avoiding it. The alternative poses unacceptable risks to civilian control of military and intelligence apparatus.

And in the final analysis, the "I was just following orders" defense just plain ain't good enough.

Trav

[Postman]

14. The CIA exists to protect the CORPORATE STATE

Period.

[formercia]

15. I used to think they were the 'good guys.'

To be honest, there are a lot of good people that work there, probably the majority. Unfortunately, there's a hard core of cold-warriors that just won't let go. They believe they are on a mission from God and fuck the Constitution, the Congress and anyone else that might get in their way.
The deeper I went into the rabbit hole, the more I realized that most what opponents said was true and some was a lot worse.